Books by "Robert Allan Fitzgerald"
7 books found
Many of the problems afflicting American education are the result of a critical shortage of qualified teachers in the classrooms. The teacher crisis is surprisingly resistant to reforms and is getting worse. This analysis of the causes underlying the crisis seeks to offer concrete, affordable proposals for effective reform. Vivian Troen and Katherine Boles, two experienced classroom teachers and education consultants, argue that because teachers are recruited from a pool of underqualified candidates, given inadequate preparation, and dropped into a culture of isolation without mentoring, support, or incentives for excellence, they are programmed to fail. Half quit within their first five years. Troen and Boles offer an alternative, a model of reform they call the Millennium School, which changes the way teachers work and improves the quality of their teaching. When teaching becomes a real profession, they contend, more academically able people will be drawn into it, colleges will be forced to improve the quality of their education, and better-prepared teachers will enter the classroom and improve the profession.
Ambrose of Milan, long cast into the shadows of the Western intellectual tradition, deserves more attention. Ambrose holds that the purpose of life is to reach eternity. That is attained by happily attending to life’s meaning: the duty to serve the common good. Being the first Senator-Bishop, Ambrose naturally melds philosophy with the Scriptures in a creative vision of eternal life already experienced in this life. This intriguing and intricate theology holds together in a creative tension seemingly contrary concepts, such as duty and freedom, merit and grace. At the heart of his enterprise is misericordia, which means a moral reset by being forgiven, that we learn to forgive others, and that we offer benevolent justice, especially to the marginalized, future generations, and the earth itself. Resourcing Ambrosian theology offers the Church and civil society a fresh and positive response to those forces which drive us apart.
The Confessions, Proslogion, and Consolation of philosophy, like the Divine comedy, all enact Platonist accents. [These accents] generate implied meditative meanings, which scholars have explored only in part. Each work calls us to read forward, on its journey to understanding, and to meditate backwards on the stages of the ascent and the relations between them. Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Dante wrote for readers experienced in meditating on the Bible, adept at exploring relations between far distant passages They designed these works as spiritual exercises for the same kind of reading and meditations. This book uses literary analysis to discover new philosophical meaning in these works. --Book jacket.
What is the church? What is its mission in the world? Modern Protestantism's inability to provide a clear answer to these seemingly simple questions has resulted in vast confusion amongst pastors about the nature of their calling and has left congregations languishing without a clear reason for existence. Many of the voices and allegiances competing for the churches' attention have rushed in to fill the void, with the result that the church in modernity has frequently found itself captive to the prevailing culture. Yet from within the belly of highly culturally accommodated churches, both the German pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the American theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas were able to articulate compelling visions of churches freed from their cultural captivity in order to truly and freely serve God and neighbor. Against the complex and confusing backdrops of Nazi Germany and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America respectively, Bonhoeffer and Hauerwas sought to recover the ethical and political character of the Christian faith through recalling the church back to the christological center of its faith. Together they provide a rich set of complementary, and at times mutually correcting, resources for the contemporary church as it seeks to faithfully bear witness to Christ amidst the ruins of Christendom.
The recent emergence of “two kingdoms” and “two cities” approaches to Christian social thinking are shown to have a key—and often unacknowledged—connection to Luther’s reshaping of the Augustinian paradigm. The project works for a better understanding of Luther’s own thought to help understand the convergences and divergences of Christian political theology in the twentieth century and today. In particular, Luther’s two-kingdom thinking issued forth in a strong distinction of law and gospel that was also worked out in twofold pairs of Israel and church, general and special revelation, creation and redemption, and especially the outward and inward life. The work traces this legacy through acceptance and modification by Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer, Lutheran and Catholic neoconservatives, Reformed two-kingdom proponents, Augustinian liberals, and finally Oliver O’Donovan. The conclusion reflects on both the historical narrative and its connection to an account of modern liberalism, as well as a theological reflection on hermeneutical decisions of the “twoness” of Christian theology.
Early Modern Catholicism makes available in modern spelling and punctuation substantial Catholic contributions to literature, history, political thought, devotion, and theology in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Rather than perpetuate the usual stereotypes and misinformation, it provides a fresh look at Catholic writing long suppressed, marginalized, and ignored. The anthology gives back voices to those silenced by prejudice, exile, persecution, or martyrdomwhile attention to actual texts challenges conventional beliefs about the period.The anthology is divided into eight sections entitled Controversies, Lives and Deaths, Poetry, Instructions and Devotions, Drama, Histories, Fiction, and Documents, and includes sixteen black and white illustrations from a variety of Early Modern sources. Amongst the selections are texts which illuminate the role of women in recusant community and in the Church; the rich traditions of prayer and mysticism; the theology and politics of martyrdom; the emergence of the Catholic Baroque inliterature and art; and the polemical battles fought within the Church and against its enemies. Early Modern Catholicism also provides a context that redefines the established canons of Early Modern England, including such figures as Edmund Spenser, John Donne, John Milton, William Shakespeare, and BenJonson.